How individual characteristics, self-regulation processes, relational and contextual variables interact and contribute to explain career indecision and life satisfaction in adolescents.

Life satisfaction is an important indicator of well-being. The first education and vocational choice is often the first important choice that the adolescent has to make. Additionally, it might be essential to define the level of life satisfaction that the adolescent experiences in the present and will experience in the future. Although some peo-ple make career decisions easily, others face numerous difficulties. According to theories related to career coun-seling psychology, several factors are important and influence the difficulties that are encountered by individuals who are facing this choice. Several factors are also directly implicated in defining the level of life satisfaction in adolescence. Some of them are stable dispositions. Others are individual characteristics that are more likely to change with developmental experiences and in the process of adapting to the context. External factors such as re-lational as well as contextual factors also impact both career indecision and life satisfaction. Thus, this thesis aimed to verify specific hypotheses related to the association and the interaction between contextual factors (na-tional belongingness and academic achievement), dispositional factors (gender and personality traits), self-evaluation (self-esteem) and self-regulation processes (parental support, career adaptability, general self-efficacy, hope and optimism) with both career indecision and global life satisfaction. Globally, evidence emerged from this thesis supported the strength of the dispositions and, in particular, of specific personality traits in predicting both outcomes. They showed that self-regulation processes that encourage a positive view of the future and self-evaluations such as self-esteem can mediate the relationship between dispositions and life satisfaction. They also indicated that self-regulation processes related to the perception of parental support can mediate the relationship between dispositions and career indecision. Moreover, the results showed that some self-regulation processes have a reciprocal influence and co-develop and that links between dispositions, self-regulation processes and be-havioral outcomes can be moderated by the context. Hence, processes that underlie the career decision-making process as well as life satisfaction are complex and can vary in time and according to the context. Studies that do not take into account this complexity risk yielding simplistic and unhelpful conclusions.